Our Story

Nature School grew out of an idea planted back in the 1990’s following a programme on RTE (Irish Television) called “Wood from the Trees” and presented by architect, Duncan Stewart. There was little recognition at the time of the importance of Ireland’s dwindling Native Woodlands which then accounted for just 1% of Irelands ground cover.

As children, we spent many happy hours playing in the evenings in the streams and old hazel woodlands on the family farm.

We were dissappointed to find out that there were virtually no supports for Native Woodlands in Ireland but after some research we discovered that there was a proposal to introduce an innovative government supported scheme which focused on the restoration and generation of Ireland’s Native Woodlands with a particular focus on biodiversity and conservation

Our woodlands here in Mayo were accepted as a pilot programme onto the Native Woodland Scheme.

And so began the process of restoring the small area of old woodland and planting a further 36,000 native Irish Trees on 5.5 Ha. We are grateful for the support of Joe Gowran and his colleagues at Muintir na Coille (The Coppice Association of Ireland) and Woodlands of Ireland.

In 2005, after building our own log house in the woodland, and the arrival our our children, we started to discover the real magic of trees and the connection to nature.

When children from the local school started coming on ‘nature walks’ we began to realise the real benefits of nature and Bernard Joyce and his wife, Zane Kažotniece founded Nature School with the tagline “Leaning Naturally”

We started to visit schools as specialists on the Heritage in Schools Programme and developed